Listening to another pitch about how AI can empower workers at various jobs across my industry, I was striken by the comparison in the title

3d printing, just like generative models, have it’s actual niche uses, where it’s obvious downsides are irrelevant and they come handy, e.g. prototyping, replacements, small-series production

Where it comes to the top-down AI promotion trend, it feels not unlike the idea of printing the whole product - a car, or a house, from the smallest details - applying the least effective method, doomed to have a worse than average outcome due to technological limitations

And screws, the thing that we nailed down long before, and that is completely incompatible with that mode of production, is a screaming, growling, shrieking example of how helpful tech can be mispurposed in the most stupid way

  • Windex007@lemmy.world
    41·
    4 days ago

    Edit: I’d originally written a response that matched your tone, and realized after a smoke that it’s needlessly confrontational and snarky, so I’m going to take another shot.

    I don’t mean to imply that it’s imperative that you don’t make your own screws.

    If you wanna make your own screws, go ahead, but I still don’t think you should 3D print them. There are existing tools to do that which are cheap, simple, and will produce vastly superior screws. Also cheaper. A tap and die set is your answer there.

    Also, if you want to leverage your 3D printer, use it for what it is actually good at which is creating complex bespoke geometries. Design your components with interlocking geometries such that you don’t NEED screws.

    Screws exist as the convenient solution to a manufacturing problem, being that it’s often easier to create complex geometries by producing a set of simpler geometries and then fastening them together. The underlying problem goes away if you can print arbitrarily complex components.

    If you think you gotta 3D print screws, you’re probably not even actually leveraging the new technology to its fullest extent anyways, you’re still designing with an old paradigm despite having new options.